
Africa Solo: My World Record Race from Cairo to Cape Town
Brian Clark
Mark Beaumont
2016, Bantam, 978-1-47352-695-2, $11.99 pb.
How do you follow up cycling around the globe and then pedaling more than 24,000 kilometers from Alaska to the tip of South America? How about a ride from Cairo to Cape Town? Mark Beaumont met that challenge with aplomb in 2015, finishing in 41 days and 10 hours to smash the old record of 59 days, but it wasn't easy. The 32-year-old Scotsman rode unsupported, occasionally got sick and had to locate lodgings each night, while averaging an astonishing 260 kilometers a day on a route from Egypt through Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana to South Africa. Though Beaumont's focus on speed left him little time to enjoy the continent and its people, his trip offered refreshing peeks into the local culture. In a small town near Khartoum where he found primitive quarters and a broken bed, his hosts prepared a tasty meal and treated him with kindness, even if they couldn't quite understand his unusual quest.
You may also be interested in...
Untold Stories of British Muslim Women as Agents of Change
Sociologist Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor and historian Jamie Gilham present 100 years of Muslim women who have contributed to the dynamism of Islam in Britain.In the Aftermath of Rome's Collapse, These Communities Shaped the Mediterranean
Three regions of the post-Roman Mediterranean, from 400 CE to 1000 CE—the Latin West, Byzantium and the early Islamic world—are the focus of this work.Noorjahan Bose: A Life of Learning
Taking inspiration from her now-deceased mother, Noorjahan Bose, a daughter of the Agunmukha, Bangladesh, now shifts her energy toward empowering other daughters.